On How to Get a 'Long Aotian' to Win Themselves Over - Chapter 6

The night rain poured, falling with such urgency that it hammered against the earth in a relentless roar. Yet, even the sound of rain lashing against the leaves could not completely drown out the rustling of crawling centipedes—it was clear there were countless numbers of them.

If it were any other time, Ying Jue would have been fearless upon seeing one or two centipedes; he might have even caught them to steep in medicinal wine. But encountering hundreds, even thousands of them, he wasn’t thinking about wine—he was worried he wouldn’t be enough to feed them all.

Watching the dense mass of centipedes continuously closing in on them through the rainy night, Ying Jue’s scalp went numb.

Suddenly seeing so many insects, Lian Muxi was also terrified, involuntarily taking half a step back.

However, Lian Muxi was a disciple of a great sect after all and had seen much of the world. After her initial panic, she quickly calmed down, forming hand seals and casting several spells.

Under the spiritual energy attacks, the centipedes quickly scattered, leaving a gap of several meters. However, in the next second, those centipedes rushed back even faster than before. The sound of their skittering legs made one’s heart tighten.

Seeing that spells weren’t working and that the bugs were drawing closer, Lian Muxi panicked and looked at Ying Jue in terror. “Big Senior Brother, what do we do?”

Don’t call me Big Senior Brother, Big Senior Brother is scared too!

In this situation, Ying Jue only regretted that he hadn’t been lured away by the ghost as he was in the original work.

Fortunately, while Ying Jue was unreliable, Qin Sheng was the opposite. Seeing Ying Jue hadn’t reacted, he decisively struck a fire-starter and lit the handle of the oil-paper umbrella in his hand.

As the flames ignited, he ignored whether he would be drenched by the rain and threw the umbrella out. The umbrella, with its burning handle, flew in a large arc through the air until the fire on the handle went out, but the original flames were actually flung out by the formation built into the umbrella. It left a ring of fire exactly two meters around them, successfully blocking the path of the fast-crawling centipedes.

It was already impressive enough that a casually thrown umbrella could achieve this, but who would have expected that after flying in a circle, the umbrella would fly right back into his hand?

The youth in black caught the returning umbrella steadily, his eyes as dark as ink staring coldly at the crawling pests.

If it were anyone else in any other scene, Ying Jue would have called it “posturing,” but when someone does this at a critical moment, can it be called posturing? This was clearly his kind, lovely savior.

Cool as hell.

Before acting, Qin Sheng had already prepared himself to be mocked by Ying Jue for defiling a spiritual treasure that didn’t belong to him. If the other person were even slightly less concerned with his image, he might have demanded compensation directly. Furthermore, this action essentially made Ying Jue lose face. However, the reality was that when Ying Jue looked at him, his eyes held only unconcealed surprise, delight, and a sort of gratitude.

Qin Sheng’s expression was complex. He tightened his grip on the oil-paper umbrella, seriously doubting he had seen correctly.

Before Qin Sheng could investigate further, Ying Jue had already looked away.

The protagonist’s side was being so helpful, showing him that the centipedes were afraid of fire—could Ying Jue continue to be an unreliable slacker?

He quickly took advantage of the lingering muscle memory from the previous formation hand-signs and cast a fire spell.

The moment the fire spell hit, the centipedes—which had been closing in again as the previous flames were extinguished by rain—retreated in fear. This effect was indeed more effective than Lian Muxi’s previous spells.

After successfully forcing the centipedes back, Ying Jue hurriedly led the two to make an escape.

They hadn’t run far when Ying Jue noticed Qin Sheng looking at him with an expression that was quite indescribable.

Before Ying Jue could ponder why, he sadly discovered that the Humiliation Value he had worked so hard to grind up had actually dropped.

It dropped by five points all at once, landing exactly on sixty.

No, after all that, shouldn’t the protagonist feel he was a lying, hypocritical, and pretentious person? Originally, Ying Jue thought that by saving the protagonist in a moment of crisis, his Humiliation Value would drop. When it didn’t drop then, Ying Jue felt safe, thinking that as long as he established the ‘hypocrite’ persona, the protagonist would assume he had an ulterior motive no matter what he did.

Who would have thought a reversal would happen now? Was it simply because he took the guy with him when he ran? But they were from the same sect, and he had a noble and refined mask to wear. He couldn’t exactly leave Qin Sheng alone.

Ying Jue hesitated to speak; he really wanted to ask the protagonist about his mental journey.

In the early stages, the male lead was gloomy, taciturn, and highly aggressive, looking difficult to get along with—but that was also exactly when he was easiest to move. However, Ying Jue wasn’t grinding Favorability; he was grinding Humiliation Value. Yet even Humiliation Value should be easy to grind. After all, a power-fantasy cultivation novel can be summarized as: He looks down on me—face slap and counter-kill. He deceives me—kill. He steals my woman—kill. He takes my heavenly treasures—continue killing. In short, it gives the impression that the protagonist is very prone to holding grudges over small things. Yet here he was, trying so hard, and the Humiliation Value was actually regressing.

Ying Jue only dwelled on the Humiliation Value for a moment before turning his attention to other things.

To be honest, Ying Jue had previously wondered if he should hire someone to take them back. If he weren’t afraid that the butterfly effect would cause even greater danger, he would have had an expert fly them back long ago, avoiding this pathetic state.

The current situation was miserable. Ying Jue had a Golden Core cultivation but didn’t know how to use it. The little junior sister was a Foundation Building genius and knew how to use her power, but her strength was relatively low. As for the protagonist, that goes without saying—his spiritual roots were destroyed, and his output relied entirely on bursting out. With a villain like him around, the protagonist probably didn’t want to show his full hand yet.

In short, this little team looked okay at first glance, but a closer look revealed flaws everywhere.

The “Flawed Trio” could only run as fast as possible before the owner of the centipedes caught up.

As the strongest one present, Ying Jue threw his dignity away and directly crushed a jade talisman, only hoping his Master would see it and come fish out his disciple.

Unfortunately, the accomplice was no fool. When Ying Jue crushed the jade talisman, he clearly felt the signal being intercepted by some kind of magnetic field.

Being new here, Ying Jue wasn’t sure if it was a hallucination. If it was indeed intercepted, Ying Jue felt they didn’t need to run anymore; they should just wait to die. Someone who could manipulate spatial energy so flexibly was, at the very least, a Nascent Soul Ancestor.

This was still early in the plot; such a powerful opponent shouldn’t be appearing yet.

“Senior Brother, is there a problem?” Lian Muxi, being observant, quickly noticed the slight change in Ying Jue’s expression.

Ying Jue shook his head, indicating nothing was wrong.

Now that he had sent the distress signal, Ying Jue couldn’t place all his hopes on his Master; he had to think of a counter-strategy.

That unknown thing had clearly locked onto them, so why only send some centipedes?

These centipedes were venomous, but they hadn’t caused much of an obstruction. Even Qin Sheng, who was just recovering from heavy injuries, could crush them one by one. Their purpose could only be surveillance.

Ying Jue had a very bad premonition.

This unhurried posture, aside from the other party being overly arrogant, had only one reason: the other party was very strong and therefore dared to play this game of cat and mouse.

A wicked cat always loves to toy with the mouse before eating it.

Ying Jue wasn’t the only one thinking this; even Qin Sheng noticed they were being toyed with.

Those centipedes followed them at a steady pace, and the moment they lowered their guard even slightly, the insects would pounce. While it wouldn’t truly make Ying Jue and the others pay a heavy price, it was impossible to defend against completely. Prolonged high concentration was draining even for Ying Jue’s Golden Core body, let alone for Lian Muxi and Qin Sheng.

During this time, Ying Jue wasn’t above using fire, but the awkward part was that Ying Jue was a transmigrator and couldn’t perfectly circulate his spiritual energy yet. He had only two choices: one, create a small fire that was easily extinguished by rain, or two, create a massive blaze that might start a forest fire regardless of the rain.

It was practically forcing Ying Jue to use ‘teeny-tiny fire.’

Meanwhile, outside the ruined temple.

A man in a crimson robe walked through the rain from afar. The rain outside hadn’t lessened, yet as he walked, his shoes, socks, and robes remained dry. Even his hair looked perfectly dry.

Countless centipedes were crawling on the ground, yet with every step he took, the centipedes would retreat a great distance as if fearing something terrifying. Looking up, one could see the man’s tall figure and a face even more dangerous than venomous creatures.

He walked into the ruined temple with his hands behind his back, his nostrils twitching, and the expression on his face finally changed.

“Lightning spiritual root, Golden Core stage… to actually let you fail, that is somewhat interesting.”

After surveying the situation inside the temple, the man gave a casual wave, and the grand array on the ground dissipated. A small red dot came to his palm after the array vanished. The man lowered his eyes as if listening to something, saying warmly:

“Don’t be in a hurry. This is just the appetizer. The more panic there is, the more interesting it becomes.”

The shadow beneath the man’s feet transformed from a human shape into a giant centipede. The shadow-centipede enveloped the man, and they disappeared from the temple together.

In the dense forest, seeing the centipedes that were peaceful just a moment ago suddenly become agitated, Ying Jue had an ominous feeling. A breath felt stuck in his chest.

Cultivators have intuition; this intuition allows them to turn bad luck into good. If Ying Jue also had this thing, then his current unease was likely related to the owner of these centipedes.

He is here.